Four firms and attorneys -- Marc Seltzer of Susman Godfrey, Hollis Salzman of Robins Kaplan, Howard Langer of Langer Grogan and Scott Martin of Hausfeld -- were appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and DirecTV. In an order (in Pacer) Monday, U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell of Los Angeles also ordered creation of a Plaintiffs' Steering Committee of Richard Koffman of Cohen Milstein and Arthur Murray of Murray Law Firm to co-chair it and three additional members to be determined by the co-lead plaintiffs' counsel and submitted to the court for approval. Dena Sharp of Girard Gibbs had objected to the proposal on the grounds she should be part of the leadership structure, and in her order the judge said the appointed firms "will best represent the plaintiffs in the case ... given these firms' and their respective attorneys' abilities to cooperate and make decision on behalf of the Plaintiffs thus far." Residential and commercial buyers of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package through DirecTV are suing, alleging they broke antitrust laws by giving the satellite company exclusive rights to live out-of-market games (see 1512300027). In a separate order (in Pacer) Monday, the court ordered the 27 class-action complaints filed against DirecTV and the NFL be consolidated, saying those pending actions involve many of the same defendants and factual allegations and the defendants didn’t oppose consolidation. The consolidated complaint is to be filed by June 24, the judge ordered.

Wiley Rein became the Satellite Industry Association's first affiliate member, SIA said in a news release Monday. The trade group launched its affiliate membership category in 2015, aimed at companies and groups previously not eligible for membership.

While AMC-2 moves from 81 degrees west to 85 degrees west, Row 44 needs alternate capacity and is requesting special temporary authority (STA) from the FCC International Bureau to operate its earth stations aboard aircraft network using SES' AMC-6 satellite for 30 days. In an IB filing Friday, Row 44 said it anticipated beginning to shift traffic starting Monday. It also said it expects to use AMC-6 for at most six to eight weeks and will seek an additional STA once the initial 30 days are up. Row 44 said that once AMC-2 is relocated to 85 degrees west, the company expects to transition its Ku-band traffic back to that satellite.

Iridium launched what it's calling an alternative GPS system, Satellite Time and Location (STL). In a news release Monday, the satellite company said STL works across its 66-satellite low earth orbit constellation and provides position, navigation and timing services globally and can be used to verify or substitute for GPS, the Global Navigation Satellite System, Galileo and other navigation services. Iridium said STL also can augment GPS by providing a timing or position source when GPS signals are degraded or unavailable, and its signals penetrate into buildings. The company said its Iridium Next satellite constellation, scheduled for completion by late 2017, will also support STL.

The FCC should approve Ligado's LTE proposal once the agency wraps up receiving comments on the satellite company's proposed operational restrictions and license modifications aimed at tackling interference with GPS, Technology Policy Institute President Thomas Lenard said in a filing Thursday in docket 12-340. While more flexibly licensed spectrum for mobile broadband was a key part of the FCC's 2010 National Broadband Plan, "the most available spectrum -- indeed, the only significant block of spectrum that is already licensed but not deployed -- is the [mobile satellite service] spectrum licensed to Ligado," Lenard said. Approving the license modification, plus allocating 1675-1680 MHz for terrestrial mobile use on a shared basis with federal users, would free up 40 megahertz -- more than half the AWS 3 spectrum, which yielded $45 billion in auction revenue, Lenard said. He said that while the FCC and White House have been trying to move government spectrum into the commercial sector, "failure to approve the current proposed license modifications would effectively achieve the opposite result by transferring a large block of spectrum from the commercial sector back to the government." In a separate filing Thursday in the docket, GPS company NovAtel raised a number of technical questions with the Roberson & Associates study Ligado has pointed to as proof the modified LTE proposal wouldn't pose a GPS interference threat (see 1605110024). NovAtel said it was "particularly concerned" that Ligado had moved away from a 1 dB rise in carrier-to-noise ratio as the standard for tolerance interference, saying it disagreed with Roberson's finding that there isn't a meaningful correlation between a 1 dB change and GPS performance and that interference must not exceed that 1 dB limit. It also questioned the lack of testing of other GPS L-band receivers and of GPS signal acquisition in the presence of LTE signals, only maintenance. Ligado didn't comment Friday.

Iridium told front office and other FCC International Bureau officials of interference concerns if the satellite company's "unique" low-earth, nongeostationary orbit network shares spectrum with what it called "ubiquitously deployed terrestrial services." Because of Iridium's Next network's uses, which include defense and public safety, "degradations in service caused by terrestrial interference could produce unusually catastrophic results," the company said in a filing Wednesday in docket 14-177. Satellite companies have been telling the commission of interference concerns as the agency's spectrum frontiers proceeding looks at using the 28 GHz band for sharing (see 1605130037), and Iridium said Next uses a higher non-adjacent frequency, in the 29 GHz band. Company representatives told International Bureau Chief Engineer Robert Nelson, Satellite Division Chief Jose Albuquerque and another bureau official that Iridium backs the FCC "determination that the bandwidth available in the 29.1-29.25 GHz band simply does not meet the requirements for terrestrial 5G networks." The agency should "continue to focus on more viable spectrum for flexible use services," Iridium said. Carrier interests including Verizon have said they back commission efforts to find a way for mobile and satellite to coexist in the 28 GHz band.

ViaSat will use capacity on SES-5 at 5 degrees east to broadcast its first Ultra HD channel in four Nordic markets, SES said in a Friday announcement. The channel, to be called ViaSat Ultra HD, will be launched after the summer in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, SES said. ViaSat customers with Ultra HD TVs and with ViaSat’s new Ultra HD set-tops to debut this summer will able to receive live Champions League soccer matches and other content, it said. The addition of ViaSat Ultra HD will bring to 24 the global number of SES-backed Ultra HD channels, or 46 percent of all channels broadcast in Ultra HD via satellite worldwide, SES said. “With more and more Ultra HD channels expected in the future, satellite will remain the optimal infrastructure to deliver this new and substantially improved viewing experience.”

Without comment, a 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel denied former LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja's petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc on the company's Chapter 11 reorganization (see 1604070012), said an order (in Pacer) Tuesday. Ahuja's counsel, Bijan Amini of Storch Amini, told us Thursday that he intends to file a petition with the Supreme Court. Ahuja -- a major shareholder in the company now known as Ligado -- challenged the reorganization plan, arguing it wasn't fair because it overpaid some senior creditors with undervalued equity in the reorganized company.

Its tests of different GPS devices show manufacturers can build products that coexist with Ligado's LTE plans, Ligado said in a submission to be filed Wednesday in FCC docket 11-109. The filing was a final result of Ligado-commissioned testing of LTE/GPS compatibility, with the company echoing what it said early this year when it filed preliminary test results (see 1602250032): that consumer GPS devices won't be adversely affected by Ligado's LTE operations within power limits agreed to by GPS companies Deere, Garmin and Trimble (see 1602040015). Ligado also said the Roberson & Associates testing proves many industrial-use GPS device designs let them coexist with Ligado LTE, while others either won't be used near network facilities or can be cheaply retrofitted in advance. Ligado said the 12 consumer devices it tested kept baseline GPS position accuracy when in presence of Ligado operations and even with severely underpowered GPS signals only one showed any LTE interference. Tablet and smartphone testing showed no effects to their GPS operations, it said. The tests of industrial devices showed one manufacturer's devices were affected, though replacing the stock antenna with a filtered antenna solved the issue, Ligado said. The company also said another manufacturer's devices were affected by LTE operations in the 1526-1536 MHz band, but Federal Aviation Administration requirements likely will include power restrictions that would resolve that issue.

Any sharing of the 28 GHz band between satellite and 5G uses needs to include FCC rules protecting satellites from aggregate interference from terrestrial transmitters, several satellite industry representatives told FCC officials in a meeting Monday, according to an ex parte filing Tuesday in docket 14-177. According to a presentation from the filing, "relatively limited numbers" of mobile terrestrial upper microwave flexible use (UMFU) deployments at FCC-proposed power levels "could severely disrupt satellites." The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) said it was working with terrestrial providers on technical parameters to understand how to mitigate that interference. The satellite industry representatives also told FCC officials, including International Bureau Satellite Division Chief Jose Albuquerque, that UMFU/fixed satellite service earth stations need co-primary status in the 37-39 GHz bands, while earth stations should be individually authorized in the 28 GHz band. The FCC also should tackle aggregate interference to satellite systems in its technical rules. The meeting included industry representatives from AT&T Entertainment Group, Boeing, EchoStar, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Iridium, Kymeta, Lockheed Martin, OneWeb, O3b, SIA, SES and ViaSat.